Commercial Real Estate Pro Network

Commercial Real Estate Professionals who work with Investors, Buyers and Sellers of Commercial Real Estate. We discuss todays opportunities, problems & solutions in Commercial Real Estate.

AI Adoption and Implementation with Michelle Hamilton - CRE PN #546 04/02/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Michelle Hamilton 03/31/2026

Real Estate Investing Mindset for Success with Jens Nielsen - CRE PN #545 03/26/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Jens Nielsen 2026 03/24/2026

Real Estate Investment Equity Building and Cash Flow with Gino Barbaro - CRE PN #544 03/19/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Gino Barbaro 03/17/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Gino Barbaro J Darrin Gross I'd like to ask you, Gino Barbaro, what is the BIGGEST RISK? Gino Barbaro That is an excellent question. I can look at risk from my own perspective in my life as when I look at risk, what is the risk of not doing something? If I had been at the restaurant back in 2008 and I would have said, You know what? It's too risky. I've got a nice little small business. I'm hanging out. I'm doing okay, and that's what a lot of people out in society right now. They have a comfortable job. They're not looking around. They think that there's no risk involved in that. Whatever you do in this world, whether you're working for yourself or you're working for an employer, there is always risk involved. Choose risk accordingly. I had that picture in my mind of, you know, becoming getting into my 60s and being stuck in a kitchen doing something that I hated. What's more riskier than that? I mean, I don't care how much money I lose and doing whatever, but to me, that picture was scary as hell. There was a lot of risk involved in that, and I didn't want to live my life that way. Now, how do you mitigate the risk? I remember being in the laundry room with my wife. It was around 2012 and I looked at her, I smelled like garlic. I just come home from the restaurant, and I said, Julia, I can't take this anymore. I need to leave New York, and I need to get out of the restaurant business. And she looked at me, and in about three seconds she said, Okay. I was shocked that she actually said, okay, but I think she looked at the pain on my face. Now, the reason why I'm telling you this story is what I proceeded to do after was to try to minimize the risk. At that point, I was all in with real estate. I said to myself, If my wife is give me the grace, and is giving me the permission to get into this venture full time. I need to give it my all. I need to learn, and I need to dedicate time and become an expert in the craft of real estate. Forget about single family homes, forget about self storage, forget about Bitcoin. Focus on multifamily, and I proceeded over the next three to four years to really become an expert in investing in real estate, that's probably the best tip that I can give you on minimizing risk, is to become an expert in whatever you're getting yourself into before you put that first dollar into an investment exhaustive join mentorships groups, go out there and learn how to become an. Investor, read tons of books, see what other people have done as far as becoming experts in that specific area. To me, that was the best thing. When she said, Yes, I couldn't let her down. And I knew that, and it's funny, because she had confidence in me. She knew that I was going to work hard. So for me to know that I'm like, I can't let her down. I can't let my family down, so that's why I plowed in. I even ended up opening up the Jake and Gino community because I knew that was a way for me to start learning. I started a podcast because Darrin gross told me would be a great idea. I wrote a book. All of a sudden, I'm learning all of these things about real estate. That's probably one of the better ways to actually start mitigating the risks is by becoming an expert in what you're doing, ultimately, you're trying to avoid the downside risk. And then for us in the real estate space, we created that framework. And I work with frameworks, whether it's buy, right, manage, right, finance, right, whether it's the three pillars of real estate, whether it's a negotiation framework that we use, you have to really understand to limit that downside risk you're looking at it, and for us to limit the risk is to have more of a long term approach. If you're trying to do something with a short window and less time, there's more risk involved in something like that. But we know if we buy an asset, we buy it with good fundamentals, we buy it in a good market that's growing, if we are able to be able to cash flow, put good debt on that. That's going to limit my downside risk going forward. Now. /episode/index/show/commercialrealestatepronetwork/id/40393430

Portugal Short Term Rentals Investment Strategy with Daniel Daly - CRE PN #543 03/12/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Daniel Daly 03/10/2026

Multifamily Value Add Investing Market Reset with Mark Shuler - CRE PN #542 03/05/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Mark Shuler 03/03/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Mark Shuler J Darrin Gross So if you're willing, I'd like to ask you. Mark Shuler, what is the BIGGEST RISK? Mark Shuler I have a pat answer for that. The biggest risk to real estate is government. That's what I was alluding to. And beginning of this conversation, the West Coast Seattle is as Uber blue as it gets. You have a lot of well meaning city councils and county councils trying to address significant housing crisis that exists throughout the entire country right now. And they, rather than letting the markets Mark operate efficiently. They get in there and they they throw roadblocks in it, and we can't produce enough housing as a consequence, then we have a supply problem, and they enact rent control and other pieces of legislation that make the operation of real estate even more difficult. I That's why I left Seattle. I can't do it here anymore, specifically because of that. So that's one thing you know. You've got to look at the the risk posed by your local government, and see if that you know, if you can develop hedges against that risk. I when I first got into the business, I could do that in western Washington, but they it just became apparent after a while, there was so much legislation being layered on that the hedges were disappearing left and right, and so I made the choice that I couldn't do it here anymore. I had to find marketplaces that were more fair. And also, I will say this is a political side. I mean most politicians, politicize housing as if it's a fight between corporate interests and you know, you know tenants who don't have any control over their lives. You know, that's the nature of renting. Most operators I know are very hard working people and are doing the best they can in a pretty oppressive regulatory environment. There's no cabal of operators out there colluding and setting rents. And Berkeley just learned a big ass lesson about this where they. They tried to sue. Who was it? You know, that online platform, real page, claiming that real page was setting rent prices in the marketplace, and they were like taking them down real page. Those are, those are some tough guys, and they did not back down from a fight. Sued the shit out of Berkeley. Berkeley tucked tail and back down because they knew they were going to lose and lose big. So this issue is very emotional. It gets very politicized. It plays well on an election cycle, and so I just get tired of it. I just want to do my job. I really want to do my job and not have this white noise distraction that I have to deal with. But unfortunately, that's what that's the biggest risk I see in real estate right now. Then you you layer on top of that, this the politics in general, what I what really concerns me. Now, in addition to that, the other big risk is, this is just our political environment. It's so but, you know, bifurcated, and it's so politicized and the conversations are so extreme, there's no more middle ground, and there are only two or three things that control our entire economy, oil and bonds. And you know, if it seems like every time Trump opens his mouth about tariffs, the bond market Spike 25 basis points, I was in the middle of a refi three weeks ago, and he, he kind of went on his tariff tantrum again, cost me $250,000 that's, that's the impact bond rates have on, you know, the cost of doing business. I was in the middle of refi. I had to do nothing but suck it up and, you know, sign that loan in one day, I lost $250,000 on a refund. So government is a, you know, housing is one of the most nuanced and market driven things I can think of. It responds to supply and demand. The players are in it, who are in it, who are really good their market, they're they're watching this all the time. And contrary to popular belief, the margins in real estate are thin. They're not that great. So if the market swings wildly like that, how do you how do you do business? You can't make you can't plan for 612, 18 months down the road, which is that's the long, the length of time we think about. We're thinking in terms of multiple years cycles. And when you have this volatility in marketplace, how do you make business plans? That is in large part why we have such a housing crisis in this country that and the cost of labor, the cost of materials, has spiked dramatically. It's just more expensive to put up housing. But then you layer on all this government nonsense, this is really hard to build housing, and that's and as a consequence, supply, demand being what it is, price of housing goes up, rents go up. I don't know a developer out there that would not love to build affordable housing, but they can't afford to do so. That's my soapbox. /episode/index/show/commercialrealestatepronetwork/id/40266940

Creative Finance Investment Strategies with Caleb Christopher - Cre PN #541 02/26/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Caleb Christopher 02/24/2026

Investing Money Mindset with George Thomas - CRE PN #540 02/19/2026

BIGGEST RISK with George Thomas 02/19/2026

BIGGEST RISK with George Thomas J Darrin Gross If you're willing, I'd like to ask you, George Thomas, What is the BIGGEST RISK? George Thomas By far, the best the biggest risk, is not investing. You know, to darrin's point about, can you avoid it? You could try to avoid it. You can put it into the savings account, and you could, you know, avoid the market because you're worried about what could happen with your money. You could, but you run the risk of having to work tirelessly and getting nowhere the rest of your life. So that that so that moves that, that moves that away. The second piece is, is, can you? Can you mitigate it in some regards? So you, you can do things to help you mitigate some by understanding what the strategies are when it comes to investing, right? Does carry risk? Yes, you could be in the wrong investment, and it could turn into a true disaster. So what you do there to mitigate is to get the education you need to be able to use what you know is necessary for you to get to your end destination, which is financial freedom. And then you talked about transferring risk. Transferring risk is, is you can transfer risk through investing. If you enter strong, long standing companies at discounted prices. If you can do that, all strong companies eventually, although they go on sale, they do rebound and then continue upward, because they are true companies that are profitable revenue generating with significant shareholder interest. So if you can get strong blue chip companies at a discount and then enter your investing, you're transferring the risk back to the company to help to for them to continue to perform and be those companies. So if you're into Microsoft, your videos and all these other ones, again, this is just examples, not financial advice, but if you can find these companies at a discount that can help you transfer some of the risk and concerns you may have about investing, transfer it back to the company that you're investing into for them to continue to perform. So the greatest risk is not investing, because if you don't invest, how exactly are you planning to get to your end destination with your financial goals for you and your family and most people that don't invest end up working tirelessly and long and missing out on important things that were important in their life, and if they would have just had just a little more of their most valuable asset time, they would have been able to do and enjoy life the way that they ultimately would have. So that, to me, is a great risk and not one I'm worth taking. So we got into investing. /episode/index/show/commercialrealestatepronetwork/id/40160705

Real Estate Investor Fixed Income Investment Strategy with Nic Deangelo - CRE PN #539 01/22/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Nic Deangelo 01/20/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Nic Deangelo J Darrin Gross I'd like to ask you, Nick Deangelo, what is the BIGGEST RISK? Nic Deangelo The biggest risk, I'll give you the biggest front side and the biggest backside. Biggest front side is always going to be due diligence on our side, we have beaten that to death. We have overlaid many economic factors. Our due diligence confidence is at an all time high. But what I see in the marketplace is many people not doing the due diligence to a real, true conservative estimate of outcomes that is the biggest risk. And we saw that the last few years. And we see the back end of what that looks like, the optimistic, the rosy projections, things like that, and that's consistently what we see. And then on the back end, let's talk portfolio strategy. We have over 600 mortgages. We got, you know what, 19 syndications that we've done, the number one risk that I've seen on that side is not thinking long term. I know I beat that to death, but in the same vein of the underwriting and being over rosy with your projections and not really looking at the real numbers and the real economic data on the back end of a portfolio, if you're not thinking long term, and you're not thinking. How these pieces come together, and you're not thinking about how the management performs consistently over a long period of time, then you see shortcuts evolve. You see bad systems evolve. You see all kinds of shorter term thinking that lead to much bigger, snowballed problems later on. So if people are heavy on their due diligence on the front end and know exactly what they're trying to target and whether or not something is specifically in their Buy Box or not, and how to get that information effectively. That's one piece. And then on the back end, it's building everything for stress testing over a long period of time, thinking about a portfolio in that same vein. So if you're doing those two things, I think you're going to be very, very, very well hedged against stress and risk in the future. /episode/index/show/commercialrealestatepronetwork/id/39711635

Financial Statements and Strategic Planning with Cary Prejean - CRE PN #538 01/15/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Cary Prejean 01/13/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Charles Gaudet 01/10/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Charles Gaudet J Darrin Gross I'd like to ask you, Charles Gaudet, what is the BIGGEST RISK? Charles Gaudet Well, we mentioned risks earlier, of you know, between the marketing risks and the operational sales risk and all that other stuff. But right now, there's the risk of the unknown. And when I say that every single business is being disrupted by AI already, as it sits right now. The thing is, is, if you look back at 2025, and you ask most people, have you been disrupted by AI? Most people will say, No. You'll ask them, okay, what have you found about your business? And they might say, well, leads have been harder. Sales have been harder. Business just feels harder. And when you ask them why, they'll say things like, make a political maybe it's Trump, maybe it's the economy, maybe it's this, maybe it's that, but it's this. Is the thing that they don't realize. They actually have been disrupted by AI. You see, 60% of all their organic traffic has disappeared between January of 2025, and December of 2025 that traffic disappeared because of AI. If you go to Google and you type in any of the buying search terms, you'll notice AI overviews start to get respond with different answers and so forth, and they're not just giving the website. If you go to perplexity and you type in a perplexity, they give you answers. They don't just give you the website. If you go to Atlas, for those who are using it, or chat GBT, you know, they'll give you answers, they don't give you the website. And so the result of that is we are being disrupted by AI as it stands right now. Do we think that trend is going to continue? Well, yes, it's going to continue. And there's disrupting technologies that unlike the web, when the internet came around and it was like, if you're not on the internet, then you don't exist, that took years before it got to that conclusion where, if you weren't on the internet, that didn't exist. But now what's happening is Google didn't ask your permission to change their algorithm. They just did it, and that started to reduce the search. There's a new browser that's coming out that Google will be launching any minute now that it's already on beta, called disco. Nobody really knows what's the impact that disco is going to have on organic search behavior. I have a client, eight figure client, and I was able to take him into the future and show him some of the future browsing activities that are going on. And you know, when this goes live, the impact. And so we typed in a buying keyword, and what ended up happening to him is AI literally said, here's the reviews of everything that's going on. The thing is, is you can also do it yourself. Would you like me to create a system and a and the emails and this and that, to do it yourself? And he was like, wait a minute, what's happening right now? And I'm like, This is why I'm showing you this, because we can prepare if we know in advance another situation. Somebody turned around, he has a product, and they go, let me take you in the future. Let's take a look what's going to happen. He put it into the into the product, and it said, here's the reviews and here's my concerns. Would you like me to show three other products based on everything that I know about you that might be better suited. And he goes, what is happening right now? I didn't think my competition would be AI. I thought it was going to be the other products in the category. And this is why we're taking you into the future, so we don't know how the extent of the disruption that we're going to be faced with, but we do know we're already being disrupted, and we will continue to be disrupted, so there are still some core fundamental things that people can put into place and into action to minimize that disruption. Have a strong unique advantage, continue to put out great, high value content that people will consume. To build that loyal fan base, build your following, build your community, build that brand awareness, and that will help to to mitigate build partnerships. Partnerships are wonderful way that helps to mitigate the. Impact of AI, but everybody's going to be everybody's going to be disrupted. The beautiful thing is that what you will see by the end of this year, the people who are the most strategic are going to have an outsized advantage over everybody else, and you will begin to see a case shaped bit of the economy. The most strategic people are going to go ahead, and they're going to get a massive advantage, and those less strategic are going to fall by the wayside, because AI is going to they're fighting for survival. AI is going to continue to guide you towards the best competitor, the best company, the best service, the best product, and it's going to continue to align itself with the best so you can't afford to be mediocre anymore. You have to be strategic. /episode/index/show/commercialrealestatepronetwork/id/39681360

Founders Trap Business Growth Marketing Systems with Charles Gaudet - CRE PN #537 01/08/2026

Automated Parking Systems with Chris Tiessen - CRE PN #536 01/01/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Christopher Tiessen 12/30/2025

Multifamily Value Add Underwriting with Ashley Garner - CRE PN #535 12/25/2025

BIGGEST RISK with Ashley Garner 12/23/2025

Short Term Rentals Real Estate Investments with Kenny Bedwell - CRE PN #534 12/18/2025

BIGGEST RISK with Kenny Bedwell 12/16/2025

BIGGEST RISK with Kenny Bedwell J Darrin Gross I'd like to ask you. Kenny Bedwell, what is the BIGGEST RISK? Kenny Bedwell So you know, I the biggest risk. I think that this the answer I was going to give you originally, and I kind of talked about it, so I'll move on from it, but it's regulation. Regulation changes. You're in trouble that is a huge risk to any investment. But the risk that I don't really hear often talked about. In our space is actually safety, guest safety. So I'll give you a stat. This is a real stat by there's a there's a guy Justin Ford, he's a safety expert in a short term rental space, and guests are so people are more, 10 times more likely to have an accident in a short term rental than in a hotel. And so there is an inherent amount of risk with hosting people in a property, especially people on on vacation. 70% of people that go on that stay at short term rentals admitted that they like to, you know, drink when they're on vacation. There's nothing wrong with that, obviously, but like, 70% of people, adults who are going and staying in a property are going to drink it when alcohol is involved. And there's, you know, the that increases the chances and the risk of things happening. And I personally, too, I mean, I could go and do a whole story with you that we could do a whole nother podcast episode on where I've had, I've, I've been in lawsuits before, of short term rentals for slip and falls and other things where people were not being careful. And I swear to this day I would, I would love to get the data and the metrics on this, how low people's IQs drop when they go on vacation, because they drop pretty fast. It's crazy. Some of the questions I get where it's like, yeah, just, you know, turn that on, or press that button that says on, and you're good to go. You know, like, people don't really think critically when they're on vacation. And, I mean, why would you you're kind of putting that, you know, putting everything on pause and taking a break, but that increases risk of accidents actually happening. And so I know, I know, you know, you know, you kind of mentioned, like, oh, about it, you know, it's not about insurance, but for short term rental host, it really is. It is very, very, I'm a testament to this personally, it's very important that you get really good insurance, because that it can save you on a rainy day. And you also need to make sure that you have you work with your insurance company and know, you know, if you need to have extra signage or, you know, the the smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors, fire extinguishers, is, are they easily accessible? All of my fire extinguishers are mounted in places that you can visibly see. And I've got multiple I put extra safety things in all of my properties because it's just to protect people, because the likelihood of that happening is so much higher than just a long term rental or someone staying at a hotel. And so all these things are super critical. And you know, the last thing that you want this is really, this happens every single year. It happens. Find out, you know a child drowned in your pool. You know, that's a big lawsuit on your hands, and so it's so important that we have these protections, especially short term rental hosts and hotel owners as well, that that protect us in the event of any of these worst case scenarios happen, because they really do, and we can't, you know, turn a blind eye to that other people happen and say, Oh, that won't happen to me. /episode/index/show/commercialrealestatepronetwork/id/38889565

Pro Storage Commercial Real Estate with Joe Downs - CRE PN #533 12/11/2025

BIGGEST RISK with Joe Downs 12/09/2025

BIGGEST RISK with Joe Downs J Darrin Gross If you're willing, I'd like to ask you, Joe downs, what is the BIGGEST RISK? Joe Downs To me, it's, I'll give you, I'll give you, all right, you just want the biggest I'm gonna go right to base. To me, it's change. It's sort of what I just alluded to, if we were, if, if we still thought, because we weren't out there interviewing and investigating other third party management companies. If we refuse to do all that and just head in the sand, we would probably start falling behind other storage facilities, other competitors, who are managing their facilities better than we are. And the reason for that is because of technology. And I alluded to that earlier, and so that's just a small example, but to me, the biggest reason is AI. The single biggest reason is of change. The biggest change agent is AI. So if we're not, and you might say, What does aI have to do with storage everything? Because AI has AI can infiltrate if you allow it and choose to. And I highly suggest you do every, every part of your business in life, AI can have an impact on positive or negative. So you have to be, not only aware, you have to be in tune. So I I worry about, if you're asked, what keeps me up at night? It's not, we're well insured from an insurance standpoint, right? You know, I think when you're in commercial real estate, there's always that lender risk of a covenant and loan doc somewhere, you know, whatever. But that doesn't keep me up at night. It's because even then you could, you can negotiate, and you got attorneys to work you out of it. To me, it's falling behind the AI curve. And because that will directly impact how we find customers, how we source deals and pro storage, I'm using it not only to source locations for properties better and faster than we can do on our own. I'm we're creating a GPT right now to market to the businesses, the 17,000 businesses in Greenville, South Carolina, that are within 10 miles of our facility, that's, I don't think we've gone vertical yet. The grounds cleared and and I think they're, they're getting ready for pad sites. Maybe they started pouring. I haven't seen an update in last in a week, but we've got to fill that facility. So how are we going to do that before all the small bay flex guys get get the word out that they're putting that they're available to receive your business? Well, we came up with an ingenious way to create a GPT that's a relocator. So a GPT is just anyone can create them. If you learn how to win on chat, GBT, it's GPT is it stands for generative now I freeze when I put myself in the spot. Now I'm freezing generative performance transformer. No pre trained generative, pre trained transformer. So it's really just an engine. It's the greatest employee that you could ever have, right? It doesn't need to sleep, eat, take breaks, anything. It does what you tell it to do, but that's the key. It does what you tell it to do. If you don't tell it to do, it won't do it. So we have created a GPT that we will put out in front of every business market, to all the businesses out there and say, Hey, if you're say, Hey, if you're looking for space, here is a here's a simple tool that's free. Put in your name of your business, where you are, where you'd like to be, square foot, square footage you need for space in the entire Greenville market area. It will then, because we'll program it, go out, go on, crexie, loop, net, loop, net, everything. It'll find all the space that's available that meets the criteria for Darrin gross to move his ABC, XYZ widget business, because he's got 1000 square feet now, and he needs 2000 or he's got 500 or no square feet, and he needs something, right? It'll return those results for you, and included in it will be our facility with all kinds of unit sizes. So there is an example of how we're using AI, not only source the location, but also source the customers that will fill the location, right? So and that if we, if I was asleep at the wheel with AI, wouldn't have any of that, maybe I'd be successful regardless. I don't know. Maybe, if, maybe the if you build it, they will come. Principle would happen. I don't know, but I'm not willing to risk it. I'm not willing to risk it with my investors money. So the to me, it's, I'm I'm harnessing the power of AI. It is absolutely incredible. It keeps me up at night for good reasons. And I told you before the show, because it's like a drug. It literally, you know the saying, If you dream it, you can make it happen, or wherever that cliche is. This is literally, AI literally makes it happen. It's just up to you to program it. So I'm excited about it, even though you asked me what's what's a risk, the risk is not staying up with not learning it, not immersing yourself in AI, because if you don't I know everything, I just said, sounds cool and and proactive, but if I'm not proactive, someone else will be, and they might be, and I don't care what you're doing, what business you're in, someone who's doing what I doing, I'm doing, is going to have a direct effect on your business, probably to the negative if you don't not only get ahead of the curve, but keep up. So to me, that's the biggest risk. It's kind of that standing still and not evolving. /episode/index/show/commercialrealestatepronetwork/id/38889280

Multifamily Leasing Strategy Training Courses with Peter Roisman - CRE PN #532 12/04/2025

BIGGEST RISK with Peter Roisman 12/02/2025

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